Cannot drag attachment from mail attachment pane to desktop

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; de; rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20060601 Firefox/2.0.0.3 (Ubuntu-edgy)
Build Identifier: Thunderbird Version 2.0.0.0 (20070326) and also Version 1.5.0.10 (20070306)

If you try to move a attachment via Drag and Drop outside Thunderbird to the desktop or a folder on the PC the drag and drop cursor symbols shows up correctly but no file will be created/moved to this place (This works fine under windows)

(The error shows under Gnome Desktop Ubuntu EdgyEft 6.10 and also under Feisty Fawn 7.04)

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. drag an email attachment
2. move the cursor to desktop (press shift or control or nothing - same thing)
3. release mouse button
Actual Results:
no file will be created/moved to the drop place

Expected Results:
the attachment should moved/copied to the drop place (in windows this works fine)

I can confirm this behavior on my machine on Fedora with KDE.
it ask to create file, but actually has no content from attachment

confirmed on fedora fc 6 with thunderbird 2 release build.

with trunk build thunderbird-3.0a1.en-US.linux-i686, bug can also be reproduced

bug still exists in new TB 2.0.0.4

Created attachment 328330
Allows drag&drop of attachments from message view to desktop

Hej,

this patch allows drag&drop of attachments to the desktop by saving the requested attachment to a temporary file and passing the URL of that file in the drag object. The patch has still two issues: 1) '/tmp' is hard coded... It seems nsIFileUtilities::getTempDirPath() could help here, but how do I instantiate such a component?
2) The name of the temporary file is the same as stored in the attachment, however as it's a temporary file, it should have a unique name (like returned by mktemp(3) under Unix). nsIFileUtilities::newTempFileName() looks promising, but could it be that there is no implementation for that method?

See similar Win XP bug here:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=384590

Bug only occurs, when attachment is "large" (> 2MB).

Ubuntu has this bug in bug tracker the link for it is
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunderbird/+bug/151162

Created attachment 340309
Use the directory-service for temporary file now

Hej,

the new patch uses directory-service to retrieve the temporary directory instead of hardcoding "/tmp".

Ciao,
Tobias

I hope to get to this later this week, sorry about the delay.

Comment on attachment 365417
adapt to HEAD

Mozilla is using hg now, so for future ref, please make patches against hg tip (cvs HEAD is getting old).

The patch doesn't apply cleanly to hg tip, but I've unbitrotted and played with it a bit. Will attach that in a moment.

(no sr needed for mail/ only changes, and I'm not a super-reviewer)

Created attachment 365876
proposed fix (unbitrotted)

Unbitrotted, and creating the file:// url in a safer way.

This patch works, but it's a bit ugly.

Windows doesn't need to do it this way, so I'm thinking the "proper" fix is probably somewhere in the gtk drag service

http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/mozilla/widget/src/windows/nsDragService.cpp#559
http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/mozilla/widget/src/gtk2/nsDragService.cpp

What do you think?

E.g. bug 267426 may be of interest, though it's windows only afaikt.

Moving from General -> MWFE, I was torn between MWFE and Message Reader UI, not so sure, feel free to change though.

We'd need litmus tests to cover this - I'm not sure if MozMill can do DnD out to a non-XUL app (i.e. to Desktop).

(In reply to comment #21)
> (In reply to comment #20)
>
> > We'd need litmus tests to cover this - I'm not sure if MozMill can do DnD out
> > to a non-XUL app (i.e. to Desktop).
>
> Good point. Do you feel about adding them ?

Not at the moment - this is a Linux-only bug AFAICT (Windows is covered somewhere else), and I touch Linux only barely. Mac doesn't seem to have this issue (but has issues with DnD of multiple-selected attachments, but that's another thing altogether).

(In reply to comment #18)
> Unbitrotted, and creating the file:// url in a safer way.
>
> This patch works, but it's a bit ugly.
Thanks for the update!

> Windows doesn't need to do it this way, so I'm thinking the "proper" fix is
> probably somewhere in the gtk drag service
>
> http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/mozilla/widget/src/windows/nsDragService.cpp#559
> http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/mozilla/widget/src/gtk2/nsDragService.cpp
Hmm, but how can I create such a temporary file inside the drag service implementation?

I have only a mailbox:// URL to the attachment there... what component can
I use to extract the attachment from the file, pointed by the mailbox:// URL, and store it in a temporary file?

Or is there another way to retrieve the attachment data somehow? /me is still missing the overview how these things work together :(

Ciao,
Tobias

Sorry, I don't think i'll be able to help much, and it might not be easy at all... First step is probably to figure out what windows does, and if you can do something similar on *nix.

Windows accepts native com interface iStream for data and our side fills that in. Here's a reference to the object created for windows dnd API compliance.

http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/mozilla/widget/src/windows/nsDataObj.cpp#910

I can't do unix but writing the temp file for O/S use should be similiar backend IMO

I can confirm this with Thunderbird 14.0 on Ubuntu 12.04 and Unity with all updates applied.

@Paolo: sadly, it's probably true. I suppose we all got to grip with it (I just stopped trying it and right-click and save, you know, even in other mailer) but it is a very nasty (and, let me say, discreting) bug to have around for so much time.

s/discreting/discrediting/ in the last message.

I am using Thunderbird 24.5.0 on OpenSuse 13.1 with KDE 4.13.0. Trying to Drag and Drop an attachment to the Dolphin file manager only shows a menu for "link" (no copy). Clicking on "link" creates a .desktop file with a link to the attachment in the message. Clicking on the link just opens an empty location - the attachment does not open. It would be good if this behaviour is fixed.

If I can chime in with a comment to the developers (if anyone is listening here): I am used to never use drag and drop of attachment on TB now, given the really broken behavior.

Suggestion: ditch the thing completely. Remove drag and drop. For good.

It's so broken it is more a danger(1) than any other thing, and it is not so necessary in the end, you can live with "save as..." and company. I suppose that a bug like that not fixed in 7 years means it's too complex to fix; let's accept it and move on. Leaving an half-baked functionality is much worse than not having it.

(1) because sometime it *seems* to work; it creates an icon from which the content is not accesible at all, and can lead to data loss for unsuspecting users.

+1 Romano Giannetti
Suggestion: ditch the thing completely. Remove drag and drop. For good.

Wow, after several years of not using TB I have recently migrated from Evolution Mail only to find out this stuff does not work yet. What a pity. (Arch Linux, MATE desktop.)

I encounter this bug with :
- Thunderbird 52.8.0
- Thunar 1.6.11 (the package depends on libgtk2.0-0 package)
- Debian 9.4 with a Linux kernel

The same:
Also I have found this bug with:
- Thunderbird 52.9.0
- Thunar 1.6.11 (the package depends on libgtk2.0-0 package)
- Debian 9.4
- Xfce 4.12

Yes, still here; will not disappear alone.

I still think that the worst problem of this bug is that is _seems_ to work, and can lead to data loss. It would be much better to forbid the drag and drop completely, if fixing it is too difficult.

It seems that the firefox bug (which is listed as a duplicate, I do not think is 100% correct) #396370 has been marked as fixed. Could this be the case for thunderbird also? That would be great...

That would be great...
+1

Checked right now with thunderbird 68.2.1 --- the bug is still here. The dropped attachment creates a file which consists of a broken link.

I *suspect* that this bug has been forgot; it seems really strange that, with all the nice things happened to thunderbird in the last couple of years, no one fixed this quite gross "feature..."

This issue is noticed on Windows 10 as well. Windows is updated. TB re-installed and still doesn't work.
Tested a new User Account and still the same.

In version 78.7.1 the behavior is better: still not working, but it raises an error instead of copying an unusable link.
The error is also ok: "drag and drop not supported".

Definitely better!

I can reproduce it with TB91.

(In reply to Martin Stránský [:stransky] (ni? me) from comment #104)
> I can reproduce it with TB91.

+1

Managed to update the patch to latest trunk so let's fix this one.

Created attachment 9250020
Bug 377621 [Linux] Support application/x-moz-file-promise mime type by text/uri-list, r?karlt

When application/x-moz-file-promise MIME content is adverised, save the file to /tmp/dnd_file-*/ directory and
offer it as text/uri-list MIME type.

Based on patches by Phil Lacy and Tobias Koenig.

Pushed by <email address hidden>:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/3b98ceafb59a
[Linux] Support application/x-moz-file-promise mime type by text/uri-list, r=karlt

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/3b98ceafb59a

Thank you!

I have Manjaro Linux with TB 102, and the problem is still here. When I do drag-and-drop to a Nemo folder I got the icon copied, and when going to Nautilus I still have "Drag and drop not supported", "an invalid drag type was used".

Ubuntu 20.04
Thunderbird 102.2.2
Thunar 4.16.10

Not work. Location specified is not compatible.

> I have Manjaro Linux with TB 102, and the problem is still here.
>...
> Not work. Location specified is not compatible.

Bugs fixed long ago is not a great place to be reporting current issues. If it reproduces under Help > Troubleshooting Mode then please file a new bug report

Will look at it - still reproducible on TB 102.

In the process of [migrating remaining bugs to the new severity system](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1789259), the severity for this bug cannot be automatically determined. Please retriage this bug using the [new severity system](https://wiki.mozilla.org/BMO/UserGuide/BugFields#bug_severity).

It's because we added text/uri-list but we still support _NETSCAPE_URL so an application can select _NETSCAPE_URL and we provide an url with "mailbox:///" prefix. We should filter out such internal URL.

If we can detect a drop target is a different application (not thunderbird itself) we may alter URL from mailbox:/// to file:/// and copy the file to /tmp.

Created attachment 9302281
Bug 377621 [Linux] Log correctly MIME type conversions r?emilio

Created attachment 9302282
Bug 377621 [Linux] Don't advertise _NETSCAPE_URL MIME type for internal data r?emilio

_NETSCAPE_URL hints target application it should store URL link instead of copy the pointed data.
Don't use that for internal URL (mailbox:/// and similar).

Depends on D161441

Pushed by <email address hidden>:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/cc7972f31488
[Linux] Log correctly MIME type conversions r=emilio
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/0cea06c45ea2
[Linux] Don't advertise _NETSCAPE_URL MIME type for internal data r=emilio

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/cc7972f31488
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/0cea06c45ea2

The D&D is still a bit broken but let's finish it at Bug 1800972. It also adds support for multiple file transfer.